And we won't hear from them again until the morning, around 6:45 a.m. Noah reads books until we go to him, Isaac lies there with his thumb in his mouth until he sees we're awake (when he'll promptly start talking to us).

The routine goes like clockwork, every single evening, regardless of who does it (whether one of us is out, or we're both out and a grandparent does it). They are both in bed by 7 p.m. And no, we don't keep going back to them once they're down. Sometimes Isaac will shout at his cot a bit. Sometimes Noah gets up and decides he wants to sleep with every single book in his room, tucked in with him in his bed.

But they don't fuss.

And it's always been this way.

Noah slept through the night from around 6 or 7 weeks. Isaac slept through from about 2 weeks. Both would wake for feeds, fuss a little, then go back to sleep.

So what is it? Did we get lucky? Are we jammy bastards? Are we bloody good at what we do? Are we jammy bastards? Are our kids very easy? Are we jammy bastards?

Don't get me wrong; early on with Noah, we had stretches where he would not go to sleep without our help. His dummy wasn't enough, and he had to have his back rubbed and patted until he fell asleep. And if his dummy fell out in the night, we were up and down shoving it back in every half an hour.

Until we did a few nights of cry it out (which was sheer hell, and would never wish on any living human being, ever). But even so, this still very early on. Maybe 4-6 months old?

I feel awful when we have a night where one of them fusses through, like last night. Isaac has some awesome FOF going right now (it was caked up all over his face this morning, kinda like a face mask) and so he was really struggling to breathe, plus he decided to poop around 3 a.m. So I was up to sort him out. And so when I mention it on twitter or facebook, because I know there are SO MANY PARENTS out there who are pretty bloody lucky to get a stretch of 3 hours sleep. On a good day.

We regularly get 7 hour stretches. We'd get more if we would just go to bed on time.

How does it all work? Is it us, the parents? Is it them, the kids? Is it a joint effort? How does it work in your household? If it does work, what's your secret? If it doesn't work, what would you change?